To keep the mice bait from dropping all the way to the ground, where it could be eaten by other animals or attract insects as they rot, researchers have developed a flotation device with streamers designed to catch in the branches of the forest foliage, where the [brown tree] snakes live and feed.

I lived on Guam for seven years (1992-9) and helped set up a one-acre "exclosure" on Andersen AFB that was supposed to be snake-proof and serve as an environment where the Guam rail, a ground-dwelling bird, could be re-introduced. It didn't work all that well.

In seven years, I saw one (ONE) live snake. It was on my car. They tend to avoid humans but they have, indeed, decimated the bird population. When the birds were gone, the snakes turned to things like lizards. Last I heard, many snakes weren't able to grow big enough to reproduce.

They definitely are a problem. Just not sure how much money should be spent on eradicating them at this point, since the damage has been done to Guam's wildlife. Best IMHO to focus on reducing their spread to other islands.

How many billions did they spend on this 'project'? I mean it took them a DECADE, TEN YEARS, to make a mice parachute? Why not just use a trot line and hook, you know like they use to fish for catfish?

For that price you could PAY the people of Guam to go out with bats and kill allot of the snake population each year to keep it down.

No wonder America is going bankrupt. I see where some of the sequestration cuts could be made!

President says cutting 85 Billion dollars a year from our spending will bring about armageddon.... but we still have the money to dose dead mice with tylenol and parachute them into the jungles of Guam to try and kill a snake.

Priceless.

1. Two million fucking snakes.2. Cost to fly helicopter to carefully drop one dead mouse into trees at a time 2,185.00 an hour for fuel and maintenance costs.3. Cost per hour for a crew of 5 Heroes Who Serve with apparantly no other vital military function - 240 an hour.4. Cost to important, prep dead mice, rig them in mouse parachutes....Unknown.

Yes, this is a pittance compared to the money Bush spent on nation-building his Noble Iraqi and Afghan Freedom Lovers...or Obama's pandering with free Obamaphones...

But still!!

Just because both Republicans and Democrats are like drunken sailors putting lapdance after lapdance on their credit card - doesn't mean it doesn't have to be paid off.The obvious problem is that poluticians themselves do not have to pay off those debts. Other people, and their kids and grandkids will...

President says cutting 85 Billion dollars a year from our spending will bring about armageddon.... but we still have the money to dose dead mice with tylenol and parachute them into the jungles of Guam to try and kill a snake.

Priceless.

1. Two million fucking snakes.2. Cost to fly helicopter to carefully drop one dead mouse into trees at a time 2,185.00 an hour for fuel and maintenance costs.3. Cost per hour for a crew of 5 Heroes Who Serve with apparantly no other vital military function - 240 an hour.4. Cost to important, prep dead mice, rig them in mouse parachutes....Unknown.

Yes, this is a pittance compared to the money Bush spent on nation-building his Noble Iraqi and Afghan Freedom Lovers...or Obama's pandering with free Obamaphones...

But still!!

Just because both Republicans and Democrats are like drunken sailors putting lapdance after lapdance on their credit card - doesn't mean it doesn't have to be paid off.The obvious problem is that poluticians themselves do not have to pay off those debts. Other people, and their kids and grandkids will...

The Snake buy back was a disaster... because (as it always happens) people brought in non-working snakes... snakes that were too old to hunt, pot smoking, long hair peace snakes... vegetarian snakes... snakes that were registered to vote... and other snakes that were no threat to birds.

In the intervening ten years quad rotor copters swept the world markets making possible the delivery of one dead mouse with snake-seeking capability, programming that allows it calculate the situational environment most beneficial for tree-entanglement and snake-proximity as factors. Snake elimination kits can include a small temporary heater to warm the dead mouse above ambient temperature upon landing to make it more visible to snakes. The copter need not detach when the mouse is swallowed thus assuring the death of the snake one way or the other.

My snakes eat newly dead mice that are warm. Some people warm up the mice they buy frozen and then snakes will eat them. My one snake won't eat a mouse that isn't white, or at least mostly white or light gray (she won't eat a mouse color or black mouse). Some people might find it useful to wiggle the warm mouse.

Some snakes will eat mouse *sausages*...

I sincerely hope that they practiced with dead baby mice to see if wild snakes would eat them if they were dangling in a tree from a snagged "parachute."